AsianScientist (Mar. 8, 2016) – While a dash of salt is needed to maintain the balance of electrolytes in the body, too much salt has been linked to a host of problems including high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. For the developing fetus, exposure to high levels of salt could even lead to liver damage, according to a study on mice and chicks published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
The World Health Organization recommends that adults restrict their intake of salt to five grams or less than a teaspoon a day. However, people in 181 out of 187 countries in the world consume more than the recommended limit, leading to an estimated 1.65 million deaths a year.
Although the effects of excessive salt intake in adults are well documented, much less is known about the impact of salt on the developing fetus.
“Our previous experiments demonstrated that the damage induced by high salt intake did not specifically occur in liver. The negative impact was more serious on the development of cardiovascular and nervous systems since they form earlier than digestive system including liver,” study corresponding author Professor Yang Xuesong told Asian Scientist Magazine.
“However, the liver is a very important metabolic organ in adults, and liver fibrosis is generally progressive and irreversible. Yet people have not paid much attention to liver damage at the embryonic stage.”
Yang and his team at Jinan University exposed both juvenile mice and chick embryos to high levels of salt and found that they showed signs of liver fibrosis and increased cell death in the liver. In cell culture studies, high salt exposure was linked to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and could be partially alleviated by treatment with vitamin C.
“Since vitamin C is well-known antioxidant, it was not that surprising to observe that the high salt exposure-induced liver fibrosis was rescued by vitamin C to some extent,” Yang explained.
Based on these findings, the researchers plan to explore the molecular mechanisms of the pathological changes caused by exposure to high levels of salt and also hunt for other antioxidants that could potentially prevent liver damage.
“High salt consumption in adults is known to increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Our study suggests that high salt intake during pregnancy should not be ignored as it not only leads to adult diseases but also negatively affects the development of fetus,” Yang said.
“Additionally, the negative impact may be cumulative, i.e. it probably enhances the possibility for suffering from cardiovascular diseases to those individuals when they become adults.”
The article can be found at: Wang et al. (2016) Liver Fibrosis Can Be Induced by High Salt Intake through Excess Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) Production.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Dubravko Sorić/Flickr/CC.
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